Gastrointestinal diseases, including inflammation and malignance, affect millions of people. For example, chronic ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease affect roughly two million Americans and are often associated with the development of colorectal cancer. While there are more than 106,680 new cases of colorectal cancer diagnosed annually, accounting for more than 55,000 deaths each year in the U.S., the etiological factors and pathogenic mechanisms of these bowel diseases still remain, for the most part, unclear.
Electrophilic dietary carbonyls may be important pathogens of bowel diseases, including neoplasms. Food consumption often results in repeated exposure to various reactive carbonyls. Long term and cumulative carbonyl exposure may eventually result in carcinogenic changes to gastrointestinal cells. Therefore, early assessment of bowel disease severity may present the best opportunity for treatment intervention.
With the development of protein marker detection methods and genetic testing, it is possible to identify protein and nucleic acid markers that will be indicative of a propensity to develop disease or indicative of a disease state. There remains a need to identify one or more markers that are associated with bowel disease in a patient. These markers may represent a protein, a nucleic acid, and/or allelic variants, which may be useful in diagnosing bowel disease severity, and whose products may be targeted for early intervention therapy.